käännettiin

Käännettiin is a Finnish finite verb form that comes from the verb kääntää, meaning either “to turn” or “to translate.” As a past tense form in the passive voice, käännettiin indicates that the action was performed on the subject by an unspecified agent. In English this corresponds to “was translated” or “was turned,” depending on the context.

Morphology and usage: Käännettiin is the past passive form, built with the stem käännet- plus the passive past ending -tiin. The form is the same across all persons and numbers, because Finnish passive does not mark person in the same way as active forms do. The present passive would be käännetään, and the participle form käännetty is used to form perfect or adjectival phrases. The past passive is common in neutral, formal, or written texts when the agent is unknown or unimportant, such as in reports, news, or descriptions of results.

Meaning and context: While the verb kääntää literally means “to turn,” in many contexts it also means “to translate.” The sense in which käännettiin is used depends on the surrounding words: for example, kirja käännettiin ruotsiksi means “the book was translated into Swedish,” while pöytä käännettiin ympäri can mean “the table was turned around.”

Etymology: The form derives from the root kääntä-, related to turning; the translation sense evolved historically from “turning words” or “turning text” into another language. The noun käännös (translation) and the verb kääntää share the same root, illustrating their semantic link between turning and rendering meaning in another language.